CDBurner: Export tracklists in plain text

After creating a CDBurner project file, you may want to print a track list — say, for an audio CD jewel case cover. CDBurner does not offer a text export option, but you can jimmy the text strings out of the project file manually with a little careful work in Terminal, by using the strings command.

strings examines binary files and sends all text strings buried within to stdout. Because there are more strings in a Burner project file than just the paths to the tracks, you’ll have to do some footwork to strip the results down to just what you want.

Let’s say you’ve got a CDBurner project file called “Cornbread.” Open a Terminal in the directory where Cornbread lives, and type (or paste):

This will output a text file called “cornbread” in your home folder. There are probably much better ways to go about this. If you have a better grep/sed string to accomplish the same job, please submit it.